Velvet Glove: Notebook Edition

It’s the ‘70s. High school’s a drag, and your parents are worse. There are skeezeballs that catcall you on the street, and teachers who wouldn’t know cool if it slapped them. You live in a crummy neighborhood, and all the excitement seems to be happening somewhere—anywhere—else. What’s a girl to do to get a little money and have some fun?

Welcome to the gang. Your girls have your back. There's drugs to be used, crime to be done, and sex to be had—if you're willing to pay the price.

Get real high… and open your mind to the universe.

Hotwire a car... and cruise the streets in style.

Bring the pain... and hurt them before they hurt you.

State your message... and let no man silence you.

We’ve got a place for you, right now, in this gang.

Can you dig it?

Velvet Glove is a PbtA tabletop role-playing game where you play a teenage girl in a gang on the streets of 1970’s America. Take exploitation movies like Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! and Switchblade Sisters, plus a little exploration of coming-of-age movies like The Outsiders, add in a gender twist, and you get Velvet Glove.

The Notebook version presented here is an aschan preview edition; it has everything you need to try Velvet Glove and learn a bit about being a teenage girl in a girl gang. Magpie Games will release a full version of Velvet Glove with more playbooks and resources in the future.

It says the full version will be coming out in 2017; did that ever happen?

Sarah RSeptember 24, 2018 4:09 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Hey Cadence!

The full version has not been completed yet, thank you for noticing that. I updated the page.

I can say there will be an exciting announcement soon. :D

Whitney DDecember 01, 2016 12:12 am UTC

PURCHASER

I only played this once and I already want to play it again, and using the same because I <3 the Maniac.

Sarah RSeptember 24, 2018 4:08 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

:D

William COctober 28, 2016 7:43 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Hi, Are the Bluebeard playbooks supposed to be in with the VG Notebook? When I clicked on the download link for the VG playbook, I got the Bluebeard books.

Sarah ROctober 28, 2016 11:06 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Hey William!

They should not. I've corrected the error, and you should be able to download the correct playbooks now. Please let me know if you still have a problem.

Artifice MAugust 18, 2016 5:14 pm UTC

PURCHASER

This game. Just... wow, this game.

I clearly had no idea what I was getting into when I picked this up. I expected big hair and 70's hoop rings and second wave feminism and telling it to the man in this glitzy retro setting. Good times and feel goods and that sort of faux rebellion stage.

What I got was gritty, realistic, upfront and frankly brutal.

This game doesn't pull punches. It doesn't sugarcoat the setting or the characters involved. You are 14 to 18 year old girls in a setting that is just predatory. You have enemy gangs where conflict is common and death of your PC can happen in meaningless showdown fights. You have poverty so real it aches with incredibly detailed descriptions as what kind of poverty and home life exists to chase these girls into a gang in the first place. You have racial bias as you are just coming out of a decade where interracial marriage was finally made legal and the horrible stereotypes that still dominate the world.

And finally...See more you have men. Adult men with all the power and all the authority and privilege who see young girls as only good for one thing, and young men who expect to have the same authority as the adults and treat you as conquests or threats.

I absolutely recommend this book. This game is incredibly tightly designed. The moves are evocative and to the point-they capture what it is you are doing and what it can cost you extremely well. Everything is on point and the playbooks capture a few classic roles rather well.

If I had to pick one flaw of the game, it sets out at doing what it does a little too well.

Don't get me wrong, I love it and recommend it, but unlike Urban Shadows where if it paints a threat and an image really well you know that its couched in fantasy. No matter how 'real' or 'intense' facing down a bloodthirsty vampire might be, dealing with an oracles foretelling that this will be your last moment, but unwilling to run and leave allies to death might be, ultimately you know its all fantasy. None of what I described has any realistic chance of happening.

Velvet Glove, by contrast, paints an incredibly detailed view of what the situation was like for young girls, and in some places still is like. And thats gutwrenching in an entirely different way.

Still, I am super impressed. Love this game and the concept and I have to give it thumbs up after thumbs up.

I am a huge fan of this game! Initially I was a bit hesitant but after checking out the mechanics, that was dispelled immediately. This is a perfect example of having mechanics that help the player into the theme but also the characters. This game tell [...]

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